This is at the moment’s version of The Download, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a each day dose of what’s occurring on the planet of know-how.
Introducing: the Hidden Worlds problem
A hidden world is essentially totally different from the undiscovered. We know the hidden world is there. We simply can’t see it or attain it.
Hidden worlds exist within the nice depths of the ocean and excessive above us within the planets of the night time sky. But they’re additionally throughout us within the type of waves and matter and microbes.
Technology has lengthy performed the spoiler to those worlds in hiding. We have used ships, airplanes, and rockets to shrink distances. Telescopes, cameras, satellites, drones, and radar assist us peer into and map the locations we can’t go ourselves. AI more and more performs a task, too.
If this all fascinates you as a lot as us, you’ll love the most recent problem of MIT Technology Review. It’s all about utilizing know-how to discover and expose these hidden worlds, whether or not they’re within the ocean depths, within the far reaches of our galaxy, or swirling throughout us, unseen.
Check out these tales from the journal:
+ Why Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, is being investigated as a possible host for all times.
+ Meet the intrepid divers experimenting with respiration hydrogen as a part of an effort to succeed in depths no diver has ever been earlier than.
+ Inside the hunt for brand new physics on the Large Hadron Collider, which hasn’t seen any new particles for the reason that discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
+ As AI develops at breakneck pace, this comedian explains what we are able to all be taught from the Luddites.
+ Here’s a job title you maybe haven’t heard earlier than, however will hear extra in future: local weather fairness specialist.
This is only a small number of what’s on supply. I urge you to dive in and luxuriate in the entire thing, if you discover the time. Enjoy!
The first-ever mission to tug a useless rocket out of house has simply begun
More than 9,000 metric tons of human-made steel and equipment are orbiting Earth, together with satellites, shrapnel, and the International Space Station. But a big bulk of that mass comes from one supply: the practically a thousand useless rockets which were discarded in house for the reason that house age started.
Now, for the primary time, a mission has begun to take away a kind of useless rockets. Funded by the Japanese house company JAXA, it was launched on Sunday, February 18, and is at present on its strategy to rendezvous with such a rocket within the coming weeks.
It’ll examine it after which work out how a follow-up mission may be capable of pull the useless rocket again into the environment. If it succeeds, it might reveal how we might take away massive, harmful, and uncontrolled items of house junk from orbit—objects that might trigger a monumental catastrophe in the event that they collided with satellites or spacecraft. Read the total story.
—Jonathan O’Callaghan
Why hydrogen is dropping the race to energy cleaner vehicles
Imagine a automobile that doesn’t emit any planet-warming gases—or any air pollution in any respect, for that matter. Unlike the EVs on the roads at the moment, it doesn’t take an hour or extra to cost—simply gas up and go.
It sounds too good to be true, however it’s the fact of autos powered by hydrogen gas cells. And virtually no person needs one.
Don’t get me improper: hydrogen autos are offered world wide. But they look like lurching towards one thing of a useless finish, with gas costs going up, automobile gross sales stagnating, and fueling stations shutting down. Read our story to seek out out why that’s, and what we’d have to get these vehicles on the highway.
—Casey Crownhart
The story above is for subscribers-only. But subscriptions begin from simply $8 a month to get entry to all of MIT Technology Review’s award-winning journalism—why not strive it out?
Why Chinese apps selected to movie super-short cleaning soap operas in Southeast Asia
A handful of Chinese firms are betting that brief movies can disrupt the film and TV trade. These “soap operas for the TikTok age” have discovered an enormous viewers in China, making a market price $5 billion. Now, they’re betting that these reveals, as soon as tailored, can attraction to an American viewers.
But reasonably than simply leaping straight into the US, many of those companies are utilizing Southeast Asia as each a testing floor, and a manufacturing hub. And they’re treading a well-worn path for utilizing that area as the primary frontier for enlargement outdoors China. Read the total story.
—Zeyi Yang
This story is from China Report, our weekly e-newsletter about China’s tech scene and the way it interacts with the world. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to seek out you at the moment’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 Apple is killing its electrical automobile mission
Execs say they’ll get the two,000-odd staff engaged on it to deal with generative AI as a substitute. (Bloomberg $)
+ This is why they axed it. (Wired $)
+ Despite by no means promoting a single automobile, Apple nonetheless managed to exert an impression on the automobile trade. (The Atlantic $)
2 Google’s massive AI push is coming again to chunk it
The issues with generative AI hold being laid naked for all to see, in actual time. (WSJ $)
+ Apple’s shareholders are attempting to power it to be extra clear concerning the dangers related to AI. (FT $)
3 How the Pentagon makes use of focused adverts to seek out its targets
Including Vladimir Putin. No, actually. (Wired $)
+ Nowhere on-line is secure from adverts nowadays. (The Atlantic $)
4 AI is coming for the porn trade
But porn firms consider some folks pays a premium to work together with an actual human being. (WP $)
5 An out-of-control hearth is forcing mass evacuations in Texas
It’s greater than doubled in measurement since igniting on Monday afternoon. (CNN)
+ The quest to construct wildfire-resistant properties. (MIT Technology Review)
6 A pharma firm posted constructive outcomes for one more weight reduction drug
Viking Therapeutics, a smaller participant from San Diego, has joined the goldrush. (Quartz $)
+ These medicine are wildly in style and efficient. But their long-term well being impacts are nonetheless unknown. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Delivery drivers should take care of off-the-charts air air pollution
It’s such a giant downside in South Asia that a few of them are compelled to take sick days consequently. (Rest of World)
8 Crypto miners blocked authorized efforts to disclose how a lot vitality they use
A federal choose granted a brief restraining order which is able to forestall the Department of Energy from gathering the info. (The Verge)
+ Bitcoin’s worth hit a two-year excessive. (Quartz)
9 Some recommendation: don’t use ChatGPT in your taxes
Or, frankly, something necessary. (CNET)
10 Want to really feel unhappy? Ask TikTok how outdated you look
I’ve… zero temptation to do that. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“I feel so powerless in this state.”
—Lochrane Chase, a 36-year-old lifelong resident of Birmingham, Alabama, tells Wired how she’s having to place her plans to pursue IVF on maintain because of the Alabama Supreme Court’s February 16 ruling, which acknowledged that embryos are “unborn children.”
The massive story
This artist is dominating AI-generated artwork. And he’s not comfortable about it.
September 2022
Greg Rutkowski is a Polish digital artist who makes use of classical portray kinds to create dreamy fantasy landscapes. His distinctive illustration fashion has been utilized in a number of the world’s hottest fantasy video games, together with Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.
Now he’s develop into successful within the new world of text-to-image AI technology, turning into one of the vital generally used prompts within the open-source AI artwork generator Stable Diffusion.
But this and different open-source applications are constructed by scraping pictures from the web, typically with out permission and correct attribution to artists. As a consequence, they’re elevating difficult questions on ethics and copyright. And artists like Rutkowski have had sufficient. Read the total story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
We can nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ There are so some ways to say “drunk” in English. Drunkonyms, if you’ll.
+ Some superb close-up images on show right here.
+ Look after your joints, they usually’ll take care of you.
+ A philanthropist has donated $1 billion to make sure college students on the Albert Einstein College of Medicine within the Bronx will get free tuition “in perpetuity.”